Christmas In McAllen...

"And Man will live
forevermore
because of Christmas Day..."
- Mary's Boy Child

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files

McALLEN, Texas - Back when my main interest in life was playing Little League baseball for the Hidalgo Lions, it was hitting a line drive over third base that thrilled me like little else, that or robbing another kid of a triple down the leftfield line with my magical glove. I loved being 12 years old. My old glove, that dirty, No. 5 uniform and bag of peanuts in my backpocket, that was my life as a youngster in this town. The Lions had drafted me after tryouts and I played two years for Coach Garibay, a fair-minded, always positive man.

In between games, however, I spent the rest of my time in the basement classrooms of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, learning the scripture and learning the protocol of the altar boy. It was another kind of uniform, this one without a number, but I felt I was on yet another winning team, perhaps the best one ever.

I'll be back in McAllen this weekend to celebrate Christmas with family. And I'm sure we'll be at Midnight Mass on Saturday night, again at age-less Sacred Heart, the same downtown church where we held my mother's funeral mass and the same church where I gave the eulogy for her. In the many years that followed, I lived elsewhere, at times too far to even consider returning. Critics may laugh, but McAllen remains important in my life for a variety of reasons and memories. It is my homeland, my handy refuge from the faster life of the city.

This Christmas, I will go to my church and take to my knees to say a prayer for my mother, perhaps using the same words I have used whenever I've found myself inside a church, and especially since her death. That was four years ago this coming April, the day I confirmed for myself what I'd heard forever - that the blow of a mother's passing is the toughest of blows a man will ever face. It is true. Don't fool yourself if you haven't yet faced that moment; it will crush you and crush you some more.

That last Christmas before her death was a roller-coaster of emotions. I was living in Fort Worth and slowly realizing that my mother's illnesses were getting worse by the week, that everytime my brothers and sisters relayed information it was always bad. My mother spent the last three years of her life battling heart problems that, as is often the case, segued to inevitable surgeries. Months into her treatments, when the inevitable loomed all-too-real, doctors told us they'd done all they could do. Tired of the invasive treatments and perhaps knowing her fate, my mother choked out a request that she simply be taken home, that she wished to die at home. Sons and daughters aren't the best judges of medicine when it comes to parents. We hoped, but we also knew that age breaks the body down. We all wanted the doctors to work miracles. Of course, they cannot.

But in the end we agreed with my moher's wishes and had her discharged from the hospital. The next three weeks turned into a three-act play, with my mother slowly coming out of her drugged world, then seeming to gain life the second week, before succumbing to her age at the end of the third. She was 83 years old.

I think of her all year, of course.

Christmastime adds a bit more to her story and to our memories. We were not a rich family. My mother would save those Green stamps she got at the grocery store and then walk us to the claim center when she had enough filled booklets to get us something or another. One year, I got a Baltimore Colts helmet that felt as real to me as the one worn by the real players. Another year, she got me a toy gun I'd seen on a TV western. My siblings got their own stuff, dolls and toy soldiers and games. She saved those stamp books the entire year.

I'll inhale a lungful of Rio Grande Valley air when we drive into Edinburg and likely not breathe until I get to my family's house. It's never easy for me anymore. My mother not being home saddens me. She was always there when we rang the doorbell, when she would say "Who is it?" and then open the door to flash a huge smile. I loved hugging my mother and I wish I could do it one more time. I wish I could, I really do. And maybe that's because I also know that there were times when I didn't go see her when I could've, when other things in my life and my career seemed more important.

She's gone and won't be there when I arrive Saturday, not physically anyway.

But I'll feel her love just moving in her hometown. I've written variations of this story over the years, always remembering, always sighing, always wondering if I said "I love you" to her enough times. My heart hopes that I did; my brain tells me I didn't even come close.

Christmas 2011 is here, and, again, the religious celebration I studied for long hours in Bible classes tells me I must honor the birth of Jesus Christ as part of my faith. I will do that, but I also will spent some time with my mother at the cemetery, talking with her in a pastoral setting offered and provided by our God. It'll make her happy and proud.

Merry Christmas...

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